Just a bit about lights and out vision. Not finger waving, just information about more is less and how we wrongly perceive light and driving vision.
While I have a Cyclops LED bulbon my XR600 motorbike, it took a bit of time to get the cutoff right so not to blind others. The original Halogen light was just not good enough. The single led is only a bit better.
However, a LOT of bright lights (leds are not good. Yes they make us feel that there is more light, but beyond the lit up area it becomes very dark /black. The problem with more bright light close to the front of the car, the smaller our pupils are and the area further down the road becomes black. With a conventional light your see farther down the road as your pupils are more open and you can see farther. This is why fog lamps should not be used at night went there is no fog. Your eye are pulled down close to the front of the car and you pupils close up. You might actually hit something the moment you see it.
A set of decent headlights with osrams wired in with direct power/relays will in most cases be better than some china leds thrown in a halogen reflector, and probably also better than expensive complete led setups.
It becomes catch 22 as we get older, we see a lot less in the dark than when we were younger. So we through in the the bright Led bulbs and yes, we see more..... close to the car, but in fact seeing shorter down the road.
Excellent and interesting post.
My Mini is crying out for relays for dip + main. Mine didn't originally come with halogens, but the virtually identical RSP did. Does anyone know if it had the relays fitted, and if so how it was done? I'd love to get this retro-fitted to mine but stick as close as possible to the Rover wiring as possible.
We have two other cars in the household. A 2018 Golf GTI with LED headlights, and a 2007 BMW Z4 with factor Xenons. Like you said, the Golf's headlights seem bright and effective, but once travelling fast they don't actually seem any better than any other car I've had. The Z4's Xenons, however, are absolutely superb. Even at that age, they're easily the most effective headlights I've used.
